Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson visited St. Louis for a reflection on the history of the civil rights movement and what its legacy means for America today.
Robinson appeared at the Missouri History Museum April 10 at 9 am for an event titled “Shattered Nation: A 50-Year Retrospective of the Assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.”
King, perhaps America’s most iconic civil rights activist, and Kennedy, then a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated in 1968. At the event, Robinson discussed how the legacy of their lives and deaths can still be felt today.
“Dr. King’s resonance, I think we see it every day, really,” Robinson said in an interview before the event. “In addition to being a leader, he helped make America what it is today.”
Kennedy, Robinson said, is a more “mixed bag”. Though he agreed with many of the goals of the civil rights movement, he was unable to spur his brother John F. Kennedy’s presidential administration, in which he served as attorney general, into action.
One thing the two figures have in common, Robinson said, is that neither has an equivalent in today’s political scene.
“I’m not sure that we should expect to find equivalents in that sense,” Robinson said.
Because the African-American community is more diverse in factors like economic situation and political viewpoint than they were during the civil rights struggles of the sixties, Robinson said, it is unlikely there will ever again be a leader with the universal influence of King. The political situation is, of course, different too.
“This is an era, after the two terms of the first African-American president, which is something that was quite literally unimaginable until it happened,” Robinson said.
The Missouri History Museum event was hosted by the museum in partnership with the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis. In addition to the 50th anniversary of the King and Kennedy assassinations, the talk was in conjunction with the closing festivities for the History Museum’s “#1 In Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis,” which closes on Sunday, April 15.
Robinson praised the exhibit during his speech.
“If you haven’t, I implore you the minute we finish here please to go see,” Robinson said. “It is truly spectacular and wonderful.”
Robinson said he was grateful for the chance to speak in St. Louis, not least because otherwise, he would likely have spent the morning in a TV studio, arguing with conservative MSNBC morning show host Joe Scarborough.
In his career as a political journalist, Robinson often applies a historical lens to racism and other issues in today’s America. His twice-weekly Washington Post column is syndicated in 262 newspapers nationwide – including The St. Louis American. He also serves as the chief political analyst for the NBC and MSNBC news channels and has written three books.
Recently, many of Robinson’s columns have focused on the Donald Trump presidential administration, both its scandals involving potential ties to the Russian government and its rhetoric and policy on race. “I have no doubt that racism is much more overt than it has been in recent years,” Robinson said.
Robinson also has the background to look at American racial politics through a longer lens. Born in South Carolina in 1954, he grew up alongside the Civil Rights Movement and was part of only the second integrated class at his high school. During his speech, he recalled dealing with racism more often from teachers than students, including a geometry teacher who seemed to take pleasure in humiliating the black students in her class. While not a natural math student, Robinson said he became determined to excel.
“I would study geometry for four or five hours every night, until I knew every theorem and every proof – and I would get everything right,” Robinson said. The teacher had to give him an A plus for the class, but “I know that it stuck in her craw.”
Growing up in a deeply segregated environment, Robinson said the assassinations of King and Kennedy felt like the losses of important figures of hope for the black community. However, he said, the impact of the civil rights movement was able to endure those losses.
Though Robinson said racism was both more present and more obvious during his own childhood, he said Trump’s presidency is part of a real change in racial politics that has occurred over the past few years.
“I think the president is both symptom and cause, but he may be more of a symptom,” Robinson said.
The causes, he believes, are tied to white people’s anxiety over the decline of the traditional American economy and the changing demographics of a country where non-whites will soon be a majority. And, he said, tactics from the civil rights era can be applied to today’s fights for racial justice.
“Number one, you have to be persistent,” Robinson said.
The pace of progress, he said, can be both slow and non-linear.
“But in the end, fifteen, twenty years later, we look and we see, well, we did make some progress,” Robinson said.
The Missouri History Museum exhibit “#1 In Civil Rights: The African American Freedom Struggle in St. Louis,” closes on Sunday, April 15. For more information, visit www.mohistory.org.
